Four Benefits of Robots in Your Warehouse

In today’s fast-paced ecommerce environment, many supply chain executives face a growing logistics challenge—meeting the demands of direct-to-consumer expectations. Fueled by online shopping, shorter product life cycles and the ongoing influence of the Amazon effect, distribution centers are finding it increasingly difficult to handle large volumes of single-piece orders via traditional picking methods. Furthermore, expedited delivery times continue to require efficiencies in the supply chain—driving operational executives to seek autonomous solutions for order fulfillment.

With these growing demands in mind, GEODIS recently completed a successful robotic picking pilot at its distribution facility in Indianapolis, Indiana. The beta program involved an inventory of approximately 30,000 unique SKUs spread over 66,000 square feet during an apparel retailer’s peak season. Plagued with a dwindling labor market in the area, the facility needed to find an efficient and reliable supplement to traditional order picking. GEODIS began the search for a safe, scalable and productive solution that was fairly easy to implement and required minimal training. Enter: goods-to-person robotic picking.

Elevated Order Accuracy with Robots

With the guidance of Locus Robotics, GEODIS elected to incorporate 21 LocusBots™ into the facility. These autonomous units delivered significant improvements in throughput and accuracy while eliminating wasted steps. Each robot determined the most efficient route through the facility for optimal efficiency and order accuracy.

Furthermore, nothing diminishes profitability more quickly than mis-picks, mis-packs and general order errors. Elevating order accuracy is critical, especially when considering the soft costs of customer satisfaction and lost sales. Through the implementation of LocusBot units, GEODIS significantly increased precision picking within the facility. An intuitive user interface coupled with hands-free pick-to-picture technology and a zone-based system provided a women’s apparel brand with the type of accuracy required by today’s customer.

Increased Productivity with Robots

Prior to implementation, the pilot program utilized a conventional operation consisting of 20 employees and a considerable degree of manual labor, such as product handling, cart pushing and equipment operation. Employees walked the entire pick path as directed by the WMS (Warehouse Management System), then guided the pushcart to the packaging area for staging. With an autonomous and smart-picking solution, employees remain in specific zones while the robotic units travel between pick and put operations. Because each LocusBot is responsible for delivering products from the employee to the packaging area, the distance each employee travels during a standard shift is considerably reduced as well. In the fulfillment landscape, reducing a repetitious task by even 10 seconds can yield a significant increase in productivity. In fact through the implementation of robotic picking technology, this women’s apparel brand realized a 100 percent increase in operational efficiency.

Improved Employee Experience with Robots

Of course any time businesses discuss the use of robots, there is always the question of how they will be received and utilized by the team. Typically, the phrase “robotic automation” can evoke feelings of anxiety within a facility. However during the pilot program, employees responded positively to the integration of the LocusBot units, stating that the robots provided a sense of empowerment and allowed them to do their jobs more effectively.

One unique capability is recognizing an employee’s identifier via their badge and displaying the text in their native language. The LocusBot “speaks” multiple languages including English, Burmese, Spanish, and Chin—a Southeast Asian language spoken in Burma, India and Bangladesh. In addition to ease of communication with the robots, the LocusBots reduce training time by 40 percent, allowing employees to onboard faster and feel like contributors to the team sooner.

Amplified Results with Robots

So what does this mean for your supply chain? As more and more consumers expect “fast and free” shipping, an effective goods-to-person picking system provides the foundational means for meeting market demands with accelerated fulfillment times. As Bob Trebilock, a contributor for Modern Materials Handling, put it, “Robotic materials handling is at a tipping point, and it feels as if the adoption rate is about to take off.”
Since the success of the pilot, GEODIS now has an extensive list of customers seeking to implement collaborative robotics in their efulfillment operations.